City Dark(57)

“The lawsuits were all nuisance suits,” she said. “You also have access to money, money you’ve used to interfere with Mr. DeSantos’s life. Maybe worse. You’ve got to acknowledge that.”

“What if I do? I’ve sued plenty of people, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

“Yes, pretty much everyone who’s been involved in your life professionally,” Aideen said.

“Which suggests even less of a motive on my part to somehow create a far-reaching conspiracy against Joseph DeSantos involving murder. As you can see, I’m an equal-opportunity legal bully. I have used the system that’s been stacked against me for two decades. I’ve used it as liberally as it’s been used against me. DeSantos was a bitter drunk whom I went after because I found it worthwhile. He’s now revealed himself to be a monster. That has nothing to do with me. And quite frankly it doesn’t concern me either.”

“He broke you, though,” Aideen said at low volume and then wondered if she should have. But it was out, and Hathorne seemed unmoved. “The process that put you in here after so many years in prison—I think it pulled you apart. I think you’ve been focused on DeSantos since then.”

“I was broken long before that dispositional hearing, but perhaps that kind of thuggish, police-like braggadocio is what DeSantos engaged in, with you and others? You worked with him, after all.”

“I’ve been studying up on you, Dr. Hathorne. I don’t mean any disrespect, and I really don’t judge, but I think maybe there’s something you could add as far as what’s happened to Joe. You don’t have to have been behind anything. Maybe you just know something about it.”

“This conspiracy, you mean.”

“If that’s what it is, then yeah. You have a network. ‘Elaborate’ is a word you used earlier, and the fact is, the network you’ve developed from in here and from your time in corrections is very elaborate.”

“How powerful you imagine me,” he said, sounding almost wistful. “And how magnanimous, as if, assuming I did know of some scheme to tear apart Joseph DeSantos’s life, I’d share it with you in order to save him.”

“I do believe you have power,” she said. “I believe you have free will and a soul. So maybe you’ll search yourself and tell me if there is something Joe deserves to know. Or not, but it’s my job to ask.”

“To ask, or to beg, on his behalf?”

“Just to ask. He wouldn’t want me to beg.”

“Understood. So if we are asking things, Ms. Bradigan, may I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Why are you defending DeSantos?”

“Everyone deserves a defense.”

“But why you? I know for a fact that you did almost no defense work before this.”

“So he probably deserves better than what I can offer.”

“He chose you, though.”

“He did.”

“Yes, and you’re fighting for him.”

“I’m doing my job.”

“Ah, but I think you’re doing more than that,” he said, his eyes brightening. “You’re fighting for him, and I admire that.”

Aideen found that the longer she was in his company, the less creeped out—weirded out—she felt around him. She made a mental note to never be unmindful of that, because it seemed dangerous. “That’s why I’m here,” she said, having little else to say.

“Of course, but has anyone ever fought for you that way, Ms. Bradigan?” For a moment, Aideen was taken aback. She was fairly certain that she’d never been asked anything of the sort. Hathorne seemed not to notice.

“I’m sorry, fought for me?”

“Yes. Not in a dramatic sense, necessarily. Has anyone ever really stood up for you? I don’t mean your parents or siblings, in the roles they played in your upbringing. I mean beyond that. Has anyone struggled against others, or a system, so that you’d be more successful or more secure? More comfortable, even?”

Aideen hesitated, the pause less about being uncertain and more about how much she was revealing to a guy like Aaron Hathorne. She gave a more or less honest answer.

“No. Not really.”

“Then perhaps you can understand a person like me,” Hathorne said. She almost opened her mouth to say something time honored and publicly defensible, like God forbid I ever understand a person like you, but stopped herself. Most people might think a thing like that. Some might say it. But it was neither productive nor professional.

“I can understand feeling separated from the world,” she said. “Undefended. I doubt I could fathom what it’s like to be judged by it so thoroughly.”

“You certainly could not. And you may be the only person I’ve met in twenty years willing to even contemplate the idea. I admire what you’re doing for Joe DeSantos. I’ve never known devotion like that. You referred to the money I control through a trust. It has bought me legal competence. It has never—not once—bought me devotion. My lawyers have treated me much like my family always has. Like a filthy thing, a rat or a cockroach they were nevertheless responsible for.”

“I’m sorry for that.”

“It would be very appropriate not to be, but thank you. You’re a noble lawyer, it seems.”